Father To Son
by Solstice Muse
Summary: One shot set just after Ron tells his family that he's not going back to school.Arthur has a chat with Ron about his failings as a father.


_A/N This was written as Puguita's birthday present. She loves Ron and Arthur's relationship so I wrote her a special father/son one-shot. I re-post it here with her kind permission._

**Father To Son**

His wife had been screaming, not her usual scream, that he could ignore with ease. The scream reserved for the twins was easily tuned out, the scream that Ginny could coax out of her mother when she was refusing to play the part of the sweet little princess, the general scream of outrage on Harry's behalf. He could live with them all. If his wife wasn't screaming about something he'd be worried.

This was a different scream however, this scream penetrated him to the bone marrow and made him feel as if somebody had plunged their hands deep inside him and given him a good hard shake.

It was her _'my baby boy's going to die' _scream.

He sat outside the Burrow with a very shaken Harry and Hermione while his youngest son had a stand up row with his mother in the kitchen.

The twins had retreated into the living room so as not to get caught in the crossfire. Ginny had run upstairs to her bedroom during the preceding protest at Harry's declaration that he was going off on a mission for Dumbledore, although Arthur doubted that she was missing a single word of her brother and mother's war of words. Bill and Fleur were on their honeymoon, thankfully and Charlie was trying to lower his mother's decibel level while backing up what she was saying in a more even tone to try and talk Ron out of the decision he had made.

"Stay out of this Charlie, it's got nothing to do with you!"

"Oh but I don't doubt that if he was in agreement with you over this...this..._s-suicide mission_ you'd be all too willing to hear what he had to say!" his mother strained against her own tears to say what she felt needed to be said.

"I'm of age mother, I don't have to have permission and you can't bloody stop me!" Ron growled defiantly.

"You are not going!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Not only am I going but I'm seriously wondering if it's worth me coming back!" Ron yelled back before Arthur jumped at the sound of the back door opening and then slamming shut so hard that the glass broke.

Ron was red in the face and he turned to Harry and spoke stiffly.

"Right, are we going or not?"

Harry rose to his feet and pointed upwards.

"I just wanted to say goodbye to Ginny before we did," he mumbled before rushing into the house, the door opening and closing releasing the sound of Arthur's wife's wailing sobs and Charlie's words of comfort and then cutting them off again.

"I'm goin' for a walk," Ron sighed under his breath before stomping off towards the open fields that surrounded the Burrow.

Hermione was on her feet immediately.

"Ron wait," she began but Arthur stood before her and held her back by the shoulders.

"Would you mind if I went after him Hermione?" Arthur smiled sadly, "I really would like to talk to him before you all go."

"Of course," Hermione said, her eyes reddening and a muggy sound in her voice.

"Thank you dear," he smiled before setting off after his boy.

---

He found his son sitting in the long grass under the shade of a tall young cherry tree and grunted as he lowered himself down to join him. Ron refused to meet his eyes.

"You know what I wish Ron?" he said as he looked back at the Burrow, so tiny and unstable looking from this distance.

He saw his petulant boy shrug his shoulders and deliberately look in the opposite direction.

"I wish I had beaten you more as a little boy."

Ron's head snapped around so fast that Arthur felt sure he had heard it crack. The blue eyes, rare in a Weasley, were wide and his jaw was hanging open.

"You what?" he asked incredulously.

"I just think that if I had hit you a little more often as a child then you would be more obedient as a young adult, that's all."

Ron gave a tut and rolled his eyes before looking down at his own knees and adopting that grumpy pout of his that always made his mother weak at the knees, his sister giggle and the twins determined to turn into either a smile or full blown annoyance.

"Because I really wish you were scared of me Ron," Arthur mused dreamily, "I wish I could raise my voice and make you quake with fear. I want to be able to raise my hand in a threatening manner to you and see you cover like an abused dog."

He saw the corner of Ron's mouth twitch.

"LIKE THIS!" Arthur roared as he lifted his hand and swung it threateningly towards Ron, knuckles ready to crack him across his freckled cheek.

Ron sniggered and Arthur dropped his arm despondently.

"You see? Nothing! I really should have taken my belt to you from birth, then you'd be too scared to disobey me right now."

Ron smiled and looked back at his father.

"You're such a prat dad," he chuckled.

"Now I'll have no insubordination like that from you young whippersnapper." Arthur warned, "You're not to young to go over my knee you know?"

"I'm about three feet too long to go over your knee old man!" Ron scoffed.

"Old man is it?" Arthur said before launching himself at his son, putting him into a playful headlock and pulling him over with him onto his side, "I'll show you old!"

Ron was already wriggling around to pinch his dad just beneath the ribs and Arthur gave a girlish scream before letting go of Ron's neck and shoving him flat on his back to catch hold of one of his flailing feet and wrestle off his trainer and then his sock.

"No, no, no, cheating, cheating, cheating!" Ron sputtered in a state of flustered panic as he tried to pull his foot out of his dad's hand.

"I should have burned the soles of your feet when you were a cheeky little boy rather then doing this..." Arthur said before taking a deep breath.

"_Dad no!_" Ron said at a higher pitch than Arthur had heard come from his son since he was twelve years old.

Arthur brought his mouth down onto the sole of his son's bare foot and blew a huge raspberry against it. Ron went into a screaming convulsion of hysterical laughter and Arthur smacked his lips with distaste.

"Oh I seem to recall your feet being much cleaner when you were six Ronald!"

Ron yanked his foot out of his father's grasp and cackled.

"Unwashed for _days_, it's a defence against foot raspberry attack," he grinned as he waggled his foot just out of reach before Arthur.

"Ah 'tis the weapon the Dark Lord knows not," Arthur said as he adopted a dramatic pose, "Ronald Weasley's _feet!_"

The two of them laughed before Arthur grabbed Ron's sock up from the ground and crawled across the grass, waving it threateningly at his son, who was crawling away backwards giggling nervously.

"So that's why you grew those long legs of yours is it? To get further away from the toxic stench!"

"Keep that thing away from me," Ron warned before pulling off his other trainer and yanking the other sock off, brandishing it in his hand like a floppy sword, "I've got a fresh one and it's loaded!"

"En guarde!" Arthur declared before launching himself at his son and rolling over and over, flattening the long grass around them, to try and get the sock as close to Ron's nose as he could while avoiding getting the other thrust into his own face.

"You...see...what...I...mean?" Arthur strained to speak and fight at the same time before Ron pinned him to the trunk of the cherry tree with a triumphant look on his face and a sweaty sock dangling from his hand, "This would never have happened if you were scared of me."

Ron released his father and laughed as he sat back on his heels.

"It's not funny, I can be scary sometimes!" Arthur protested.

"Yeah right," Ron chortled derisively while dusting himself down and shaking dry grass from his hair.

"I can!"

"Sorry dad but you don't have a scary bone in your body," Ron mocked amiably.

"I should be able to intimidate you though, I should have been more like that Dursley fellow was with Harry, only with beatings as well as verbal abuse."

"Dad you couldn't swat a fly!" Ron snorted.

"I am a terrifying figure of authority, starting now," Ron broke into fits of giggles at the stern expression on his father's face as he waggled his index finger at Ron, "I forbid you to go with Harry."

Ron was almost crying with laughter now.

"I mean it," Arthur said before puffing out his chest, "I hereby forbid you to leave the Burrow all summer..._Stop laughing!"_

"I'm sorry dad," Ron said weakly as he tried to overcome his mirth, "you just can't be threatening. It's not in your nature."

Arthur pretended to be hurt by this and Ron grinned apologetically. They recovered from their play fight and soon Arthur was looking back at the house, knowing the state his wife would have worked herself into by now, and sighed.

"She'll get over it," Ron said with a slight shrug and a very small smile.

He looked back at his youngest boy and rocked forwards onto his knees to grab hold of Ron's large hands and stare into his startled eyes.

"I forbid you to go," he said in total seriousness.

Ron's lips curled into a small again and he was about to pick up where the 'tease dad' game had left off but Arthur jumped in before he could.

"I mean it Ron. You can't go. I forbid it."

Ron's face fell.

"Dad..."

"Don't argue with me, just don't go, stay at home and then go to school and stay safe."

"School?" Ron blurted, "Safe? The place I nearly got killed twice this year? The place Bill lost his bloody face? The place Dumbledore died? "

"I don't want you to go looking for the people who want to hurt you Ron."

"The people that want to hurt me will keep doing it whether I look for them or not. If I find them then I've got a better chance then if they sneak up on me eh?"

Arthur gripped Ron by his upper arms and shook him slightly.

"Don't go."

"I'm sorry dad," Ron whispered as he lowered his head.

"I forbid you to-"

"Dad stop this now okay?" Ron winced at the painfully serious tone this moment had taken.

"I _forbid_ you to die before me."

Ron stared into his eyes and blinked.

"Promise me you won't Ron," Arthur said with determination.

"Dad you know I ca-"

"I forbid it!" he growled as he gave Ron another shake.

His son gave a single nod and Arthur tried not to let Ron feel that he was shaking on the inside himself.

"I forbid you to get hurt."

Ron seemed to slump in his hands on hearing that.

"Dad that's not..."

"Try your best," Arthur said sternly.

"I will," he said with another nod.

"Come home safe," he said, his voice cracking slightly.

Ron moved forward and hugged his father tightly. Arthur clung on to his boy for dear life and wished that he never had to grow up and become a man and do grown up things. He wanted that giggly little lad who would tickle fight with him and come to the dinner table with perfectly clean hands and a filthy face. He wanted that Ron forever.

"Promise me son."

"I promise dad."

Arthur drew in a shuddering breath and they broke apart from each other. He patted Ron on the side of his face, feeling sad at the fact that he could feel stubble where before he had only felt that smooth round cheek, and sat back against the trunk of the tree once again.

"Seriously dad," Ron said with a deeply sincere expression on his formerly cheeky face, "If anyone's going to kill me...it's gonna be mum."

Arthur looked at Ron's serious expression for a moment before the eyes sparkled and that little twitch tweaked the corner of his mouth. Arthur broke into a great booming laugh and Ron threw himself back, flat on the grass again, with a chortle.

The two of them sat, hidden in the long grass on that hazy afternoon in August, guffawing like idiots until Harry and Hermione came to find them and take Ron away.

Arthur Weasley never once hit one of his children. He couldn't scare them or intimidate them. But he could sit alone beneath the shade of a tall young cherry tree and smile in the knowledge that they had grown up beautifully...and he would be outlived by every single one of them.


End file.
